6
The night seemed to stretch for an eternity, but I’m worried it wasn’t long enough to fend off the fresh horrors the day will bring. The sun peeks over the horizon and climbs higher until it’s free of the sea’s maw and bleeds scarlet over the water.
I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the ache settled between their blades. August stands and dusts the sand off his legs and backside, stretching his arms high and bending left, then right.
I groan when I think of the amount of sand that’s somehow wormed its way into this tight bodysuit. I’ll never be able to get it all out. Not that I have other clothes or choices.
I brace myself on the wall and stand, letting my leg adjust to my weight and finding my balance.
August’s small sandy island is empty.
My shoulders sink. He must have finally gone inside.
I turn, trying to garner the courage to enter my house when his voice startles me.
“The paths are open now.” August is walking up the sandy path that leads to my oikos.
Peeling a hand off my racing heart, I spew the first thing that comes to mind. “So, we’re only trapped here at night.”
He affirms with a troubled smile. “It seems that way.”
I wonder if it’ll be like this every night. A private island that functions as a prison cell. What pretty cages they built for us.
When he stands close, I realize how tall he is. My head barely reaches his chest. I try to reconcile this man with the teenage boy I saw singing when I was young. Or maybe it’s the different versions of me I’m trying to align.
So little time has passed since I left home again, yet I spent the majority with August last night in a quiet, unexpected comradery. How can I thank him for being so kind? Or explain why I couldn’t go in, and why I still can’t bring myself to cross the threshold?
“I’d invite you in, but I don’t know if I can go in there myself.”
August’s brows meet as he studies me.
Just then, Niall emerges from his oikos, whistling as he pretends to fasten back the shutters on his closest window when he never closed them to the moonlight in the first place. “Good morning!” he greets, looking between me and my guest. “You okay, Cal?”
August watches me, waiting for my answer.
“I’m fine.”
August’s lashes flutter the tiniest bit. Now that I’ve trusted him with the truth, he can tell it from a lie.
“Do you care if I go in?” August asks.
He wants to know what would make me spend the night outside despite the dangers lurking in the nearby waves, rather than sleep inside this oikos.
I nod my assent.
He moves past me and twists the doorknob like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Steps into the main living space.
I bite my nail as he turns a circle. His blue eyes catch on each piece of furniture, fine and undisturbed, raking over the craftsmanship and detailed designs.
And then he notices the fresco on the wall.
He gets close, leans left, then right, lips parting as he takes in its duplicity.
Twin lionesses morphing into two mortal sisters, bonded for life and separated by death.
A muscle ticks in his jaw, and I swear he would raze the building if he had the power of a god.
August Aymes scrubs a hand over his mouth as he fumes over the image.
Why did Ares have this painted? What message does he wish to send? That our fates, and our deaths, will be the same? Or is this just another punishment? Another stab amid a thousand cuts.
Does he know I can’t stand to look at her face or mine? Did he know I would have removed or shattered any mirror he’d used in the space, so he made something that can’t be broken or tossed outside?
Not that I may not try… Difficult isn’t the same thing as impossible. And the wall is plaster. Some well-placed blows would make it crumble. I’m just not sure if I could stop once I started. I might bring the walls and roof down on my head and strip Ares of the pleasure of killing me.
“I’m sorry,” August says, coming back outside to stand with me. “For what he did to you, and her. I’m sorry he took her from you. I can’t imagine. I have brothers, and I can’t…”
My throat swells and tears sting my eyes. To keep them at bay, I stare at my damaged hands. I’ve bitten the nails down to the quick, and the cuticles are sore and bleeding. “I couldn’t look at it.”
My chin quivers for a moment. But with palms over my stomach, I tuck the sliver of pain into my middle and hold it there while it melds with all the rest.
After Carina died, Abuela likened my anger to the well of lava in the belly of a great volcano, churning until it builds so much pressure it has no other choice but to release. She says someday, I’ll explode and obliterate everything closest to me.
When she told me that, she was worried about her relationship with me, and mine with Cillian. I’d withdrawn. Grown cold. Pushed them away so they couldn’t get close enough to get burned.
She recognized all that could be ruined if we let it, though. My persistent family loved me through my grief, because it didn’t just belong to me, it was also theirs.
Now that I’ve been dragged to Olympus to take part in Ares’s games, and now that the Greek god of war is near, I hope Abuela was right. I welcome her predicted explosion, and hope that it’ll be as unexpected and catastrophic as it is glorious.
When I detonate, let it be next to the Greek god of war.
From the yard outside my borrowed, tormenting home, August watches me. It’s unsettling how much he sees, yet I’m so tired of hiding my feelings from everyone, for everyone, it’s refreshing not to have to.
That’s why I stayed outside last night. And why he did, too.
I know I owe him an explanation, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be to explain. “Thank you for sitting with me.”
His dark lashes flutter. “It was nothing.”
“Not to me.”
Niall, still on his island, whistles nonchalantly as he plucks the leaves on a small shrub at the water’s edge. He lifts a leg to dip his bare foot in.
“Niall, don’t!” I shout.
He curses and jumps back, losing his footing and crashing onto his hip. “Kelpies!” he shrills. “There are kelpies in the water!”
I search the sea.
He mutters another curse, “Did Morrigan send them to guard us?”
I shake my head when August’s brow rises. Hermes warned that the sky and waters were guarded, which means his pantheon put the beasts in the ocean between our homes. Besides…
“She wouldn’t have sent them,” I call out. “Morrigan hates kelpies. She’d send a raven, but never a water horse. Even she can’t make a kelpie into a loyal mutt. They’ll drown whatever they can catch with their teeth. If that even was a kelpie…”
“What do you mean?” August asks, warily watching the waves. “He seems pretty sure.”
I shake my head. “I don’t trust anything here. Not even what I see. You might not want to, either.”
“What you can see…” he mutters, then looks back at my house with a smile, as if he thought of something important. “I’ll be right back.”
He jogs inside my appointed oikos and I hear a loud thump, splintering wood, and the sound of hammering.
“Callalie?” he calls a minute later. “Is this better?”
Sticking my head inside the oikos, I take in his handiwork.
After breaking the side table to borrow its nails, he ripped the linen blanket off the bed and used one of the table’s stout legs to hammer the blanket to the plastered wall, covering the fresco.
Only the edges of the artwork can be seen.
While the image is emblazoned in my memory, hiding it helps.
It’s like the mirrors I shattered at Abuela’s.
I know every inch of my sister’s face – in life and in death. We weren’t twins, but I look like her, and the older I get, the more obvious it becomes. Abuela said that to me once. Only once, thanks to the temper my father gave me.
“Thank you,” I rasp, moving farther into the room.
“I ruined your table, but I can bring you mine,” he offers.
“I don’t need one.”
When I think he might insist, he simply says he’s going to go back to his oikos to get cleaned up for the day. My heart drops at the thought of being alone, but it’s for the best. Soon, all the contestants will be pitted against one another.
Before he reaches the threshold, a strong gust pushes into the room, courtesy of none other than Ceann ársa.
The sight of the great préachán blocking the entire door takes my breath away.
August backs into the room with his hands out, positioning himself to guard me from a bird who could pull his spinal cord out of his back and slurp it down like a worm.
“I was so worried about you!” I run to the avian and throw my arms around his neck.
“Are you okay? Did Morrigan heal your wing?” He stretches the appendage outside the door, demonstrating that it’s intact and functional.
“I’m so glad.” The Ancient One’s massive beak parts and a small, sealed piece of parchment falls to the floor.
I affectionately pat his neck. “Ah, already running her errands, I see.”
He caws, then ducks his head back out of the doorway and launches into the blue, soaring out over the churning sea and circling overhead once. His great shadow spills over my island, almost covering it entirely before the crow disappears like he departed through a portal in the sky. Maybe he did.
In his wake, the missive sprawls in the unused fireplace, waiting for me to pick it up.
August lingers just inside the door. His eyes flick to the letter. “I appreciate everything, August. I really do,” I tell him.
He smiles. “I’ve worn out my welcome.”
“No. It’s not that, I –”
He silences me with a playful wink. “See you soon, Callalie.”
I raise an awkward hand to wave and watch as he strides down my path and crosses over to his, my heart drumming. “Thank you again!” I shout.
He mutters a reply I don’t hear.
Did he help me because he’s a good person, or is he seeking information? Getting a feel for his competition? I glance at the blanket covering my wall. If this is strategy on his part, it’s a good one.
My thumbs crack Morrigan’s seal jaggedly down the middle. Her handwriting appears word by word.